LTE

Back in August I broke the news that Apple was lining up a component purchase of several million chipsets from Qualcomm for a CDMA-powered Verizon iPhone due in January. Last week, over two months later, the Wall Street Journal confirmed this story.
Now that folks are finally celebrating the iPhone’s imminent arrival to Verizon, speculation has shifted to whether the January model will… Read More

With 55 million customers, the 800-pound gorilla in the world’s most advanced mobile society, Japan, is NTT Docomo. And over the weekend, the company made clear it wants to retain its position in an LTE future: Docomo is ready to invest $3.4 billion in the next three years to build base stations and will start an LTE service in December this year (as the first of Japan’s three… Read More

Are you as excited as I am about LTE and the blazing fast data speeds it promises? Sure you are. And while you’re undoubtedly holding your breath waiting for 4G service and handsets, AT&T is moving forward with field trials after announcing that Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson will be providing its equipment. What’s in store for AT&T in the near future? Read More

The rest of the world is catching on rapidly but overall, Japan is still the world’s most advanced mobile society. That being said, you’d assume that the first 4G (LTE) device to get an official certification from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications must be coming from one of the many mobile companies over here, but it was South Korea’s LG who got… Read More

Faster data access with virtually no latency: LTE (Long Term Evolution) mobile broadband networks are coming, at least in the world’s most advanced mobile market, the nation of Japan. The country’s biggest cell phone carrier, NTT Docomo, said yesterday at GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Hong Kong it will go fourth generation as early as December 2010. Read More

Even though WiMAX is only available in Atlanta, Baltimore, and Portland, Dell is now offering up the wireless broadband as an option on select notebooks. The upgrade only costs $60 for the Studio 15, Studio 17, and Studio XPS line, but don’t forget that there will be a monthly cost from Sprint too. Read More

Did you just lock yourself into a 2-year mobile phone contract like me? Good timing, because AT&T just announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday that it would be rolling out Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband technology by 2011. This would replace the current 3G service, which is apparently not good enough. Verizon will probably beat them to the punch… Read More

Wuh oh – looks like it’s time to start sweating for Xohm Clear. According to Verizon VP/CTO Dick Lynch, the first rollout of Verizon’s 4G offering should go down sometime in 2009:
“We expect that LTE will actually be in service somewhere here in the U.S. probably this time next year.”
While the “this time next year” bit technically only pins things a… Read More

According to BGR, RIM is already crackin’ away at an LTE device so that it’s ready for launch whenever LTE officially goes live.
For the sake of the folks out there who don’t spend their lives memorizing every last mobile industry acronym: LTE stands for “Long Term Evolution”, and is one of the standards set to make up the next generation of mobile network… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

Jeez – busy enough day, FCC? Hot on the tails of the “white space” decision and approving Verizon’s buyout of Alltel, the FCC has cleared the merger of Sprint’s Xohm WiMax service with ClearWire – no doubt coming as a disappoint for some other carriers.
To recap the details announced back in May, Sprint will own 51% of the new company, which will take on… Read More

Wireless provider Korean Telecom reportedly signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Apple to combine “WiBro, a third generation-based communications technology, with Apple’s hit products such as the MacBook laptops and iPod media players,” according to Unwired View. Read More

Note the BS
The biggest issue with 4G networks is handover. When you’re speeding down the highway, your cellphone and wireless devices constantly hop from station to station, picking up connectivity as you go along. In a perfect world, this handover is seamless but, as we all know, in the real world it isn’t poifect.
Nortel just tested their LTE standard with vehicles moving… Read More

Note the BS
The biggest issue with 4G networks is handover. When you’re speeding down the highway, your cellphone and wireless devices constantly hop from station to station, picking up connectivity as you go along. In a perfect world, this handover is seamless but, as we all know, in the real world it isn’t poifect.
Nortel just tested their LTE standard with vehicles moving… Read More

Verizon Wireless is running a large, nation-wide 3G network. This much is known. They don’t yet have a 4G network, though we know they’re doing trials now of LTE, or Long Term Evolution, a GSM variant, but it’s not open to the public.
Reader Jonathan snapped this shot of a Verizon Wireless reseller advertising 4G service. “4G Premium Retailer,” it says. Of… Read More

Ready for worldwide, wireless Internet access? Keep dreaming!
You remember FON, right? There’s a small piece in the International Herald Tribune that tries to explain why the hippie-sounding service hasn’t taken off yet. Whereas, to be successful, FON needs millions of users spread around the world, each sharing their Internet connection wirelessly, so far only 830,000 people… Read More